Just how prevalent is "East Coast bias"? We should get a pretty good idea Sunday when the NCAA Tournament field is revealed (3 p.m., CBS). The primary indicator will be how many spots the NCAA Men's Basketball Committee gives the Pacific-10 Conference.

Of course, the number of teams that get into the NCAA depends on just what happens in the Pac-10 tournament, which continues today on FSN West and concludes at 3 p.m. Saturday on CBS.

Ted Robinson, who has been FSN's primary play-by-play voice for Pac-10 games this season, said well over half the conference should get into the Big Dance.

"It should be seven," Robinson said by phone this week after FSN's Pac-10 production meeting. "It's going to be tough because we have two 9-9s (conference records) and an 8-10. We've never even had a 9-9 team taken, so that may be a lot to defy history. But if the mandate of the (NCAA) committee is to choose the best at-large teams, regardless of conference affiliation, I can't see how you wouldn't say the top seven Pac-10 teams are not among the best 64. That's how good this league has been."

Robinson said the depth of the conference is so formidable, it must be respected.

"My belief has been that you measure a league by the bottom, not by the top. Every conference has great teams at the top."

Robinson says this is the best basketball season the Pac-10 has ever had from top to bottom, featuring a sensational array of talent that landed three freshmen (UCLA's Kevin Love, USC's O.J. Mayo and Arizona State's James Harden) and two sophomores (Stanford's Brook Lopez and California's Ryan Anderson) on the all-conference first team. Love was named the Pac-10's Player of the Year.

These days, "one and done" doesn't just refer to a team that loses in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, but also to gifted players who spend the obligatory one season in college before declaring themselves eligible for the NBA draft. It's widely believed both Mayo and Love will turn pro after this season and Robinson says who can blame them?

"It's really hard because none of us should be presumptuous enough to try to figure what a person and their families are thinking," Robinson said. "All I know is that if someone's going to be rated in the top 10, who could tell that person that they should go back? If you're going to be drafted that high, how do you say, No, I'm going to go back and risk injury'?

"When you read all of these draft simulators, it's universal that O.J. Mayo's going to be drafted in that elite group, and if indeed he believes that to be the case after this college season is over, I'd be hard pressed to imagine (he wouldn't turn pro)."

Robinson says Lopez falls into that same group, but he isn't quite as sure about Love.

"You know, that's interesting," said Robinson. "If you put some stock in these simulators, Love is not as high a pick as Mayo or Brook Lopez. But then you look at Kevin Love and you think he is so smart and he plays the game so intelligently and with his dad (Stan) being a pro player, he was so well schooled in the game."

But Robinson said the college game, with its closer 3-point line, is so congested, Love has taken a lot of punishment and perhaps if he turned pro, he would benefit from a more wide-open game, along with an NBA-style weight program.

"I think you'd see him next fall turning up at some pro camp with a little more definition in that upper body," Robinson said.

— Staff writer Jim Carlisle covers TV-Radio and also writes Tuesday columns for The Star. E-mail address: jcarlisle@VenturaCountyStar.com. For more, please see his blog at blogs.VenturaCountyStar.com/vcs/carlisle.